Fygg toothpaste 113g and 20g

 No 100 ml 😉

https://fygg.com/

 

AI

In this specific case—where a company offers a large tube (113g) and a travel-sized tube (15g) but skips a 100ml (or similar) size that would fit airline carry-on liquid restrictions—you could call it:

"Regulatory Arbitrage" or "Compliance Gap Pricing"

• The company avoids creating a 100ml (3.4 oz) size (the standard airline liquid limit) to push customers toward the larger, more profitable size while still offering a tiny travel option for those who absolutely need it.

Other Possible Terms:

1. "Forced Upsell"

   • By not offering a convenient 100ml size, they nudge travelers to buy the full-size (113g) tube (which exceeds carry-on limits) and then check their bag—or buy the tiny 15g tube and run out quickly.

2. "Airport Tax" (Informal)

   • A playful term for when companies avoid the "sweet spot" size (100ml) to make travelers pay more for convenience.

3. "The Unbundled Traveler’s Dilemma"

   • Forces travelers to either:
     • Buy the big tube + check a bag (more profit for the company).
     • Buy the tiny tube + repurchase often (higher per-gram cost).

4. "The 100ml Loophole"

   • Exploiting the fact that 100ml is the legal limit, so they avoid it to sell more of the larger size.

---

Why Do They Do This?

• Higher Profit Margins: The 113g tube is likely far more profitable per gram than a hypothetical 100ml version.
• Avoiding Cannibalization: If they sold a 100ml tube, fewer people would buy the 113g (since 100ml is "enough" for most travelers).
• Encouraging Bulk Purchases: Travelers who don’t want to repurchase often may just check their bag with the big tube.

---

Real-World Example:

Many shampoo, lotion, and toothpaste brands do this—offering 200ml+ (too big for carry-on) and 50ml (too small for a long trip) but no 100ml. It’s a deliberate strategy to maximize sales of the larger size.

Dynamic Pricing at Play (Well Done Temu)

 

Same T-Shirt: Men's Quick-Dry Breathable Athletic T-Shirt - Moisture-Wicking Summer Workout Tee with Round Neck, Short Sleeve for Gym, Running, Casual Wear - Solid Color Lifestyle Top (Regular Fit) 

I bought it for €6,65, the wrong size was delivered, but I liked the material and how it looked like and I ordered it again without paying attention to the price. Later, I noticed it was €9.83!

Temu must have thought: this guy likes the T-shirt so much, he would not mind paying almost 50% :) more!!!

Apple Music

Claude:

You're right, and it's a fair complaint. The infrastructure clearly knows the real reason — it's checking storefront-vs-location and rejecting the request — but instead of surfacing that, it returns a numbered code like 2071 with a generic "check your network" message that sends people troubleshooting Wi-Fi instead of the actual problem.

A few reasons this is probably how it stays:

• Apple's error codes are a known weak point. Across iTunes/Apple Music/App Store, numeric codes (2071, 9006, etc.) have been criticized for years for being vague catch-alls rather than specific, user-actionable messages. It's a long-standing UX gap, not something specific to region issues.
• It may be deliberate vagueness around licensing. Telling someone explicitly "this content isn't licensed in Germany" is a more legally loaded statement than Google Play's regional messaging, since Apple's catalog deals are negotiated per-territory with labels/studios, and being too specific about what's blocked where can complicate things contractually. A generic network-sounding error sidesteps that.
• Play Store's clarity is partly because app distribution is simpler. Google can say "not available in your country" for an app pretty cleanly. Music/video licensing is a tangle of different rights holders per track per territory, so a blanket "not allowed here" message might not even be technically accurate for the specific reason in every case — it could be storefront mismatch, device-region mismatch, a temporary catalog sync issue, etc., all surfacing under the same error family.

None of that makes it good design — it's just legacy debt and possibly some intentional ambiguity. If it's any consolation, you've now correctly diagnosed in two messages what Apple's own error message fails to tell people in five paragraphs of support docs.

McDonald's Receipt

 One small coffee, does the receipt have to be so big? 

Such a waste, McDonald's should know better 😊.

Claude vs ChatGPT

Me:

How come ChatGPT can access the link? 

Claude:

Fair question — the honest answer is it's a difference in what each assistant is allowed to do, not capability.

LinkedIn's robots.txt file explicitly tells automated tools not to fetch most of its pages, including post URLs like the one you shared. Anthropic configured my web-fetching tool to respect those rules, so when I hit a robots.txt block, I stop. ChatGPT's browsing tool is configured to ignore robots.txt in some cases, so it goes ahead and pulls the page anyway. Same web, different rules of engagement.

There's a reasonable debate about which approach is right — robots.txt isn't legally binding, it's a convention — but that's the policy I'm operating under.

Lufthansa Profile

My Lufthansa profile clearly specifies my preferred meal, but they never honor it, they have even told me as much.

So, Lufthansa, why do you offer this option in the profile if I still have to waste time ordering it separately in advance?

To make matters worse, you have to order a “special” meal at least 25 hours before check-in, so by the time you check in, it is already too late.

Santa Cruz Lemonade, too much Sugar

I used to like this lemonade, but I haven't bought it for some time. When I finally did, it seemed too sweet and Health Canada fully agrees 😊.

I wrote a review on https://santacruzorganic.com suggesting they use less sugar as  I'm sure it would taste even better. Let's see if they actually do it 😊. 

Anyway, I'm impressed by their transparency. Their lemonade shows 2.5 out of 5 stars (in fact 2.4 now because of my bad review), so they clearly don't filter out the negative reviews and only for this reason I should keep an eye on a half sugar lemonade from Santa Cruz.

It is very interesting as Santa Cruz kept responding to the negative comments that they had not not changed the formula, so why did I find it too sweet all of the sudden?

And I just read the explanation here What I learned when I gave up sugar for six weeks

One reason my cravings went down is simply due to reduced exposure to sugary food, which in turn altered my palate and reset my metabolism

And at some point I started to be more mindful of the sugar content of the foods and I have a story about this as well, but for later.

How will Netflix solve its glaring Stranger Things problem?

 https://www.msn.com/en-ca/entertainment/tv/netflix-has-a-stranger-things-problem/ar-AA1RjO7M

For Netflix, it must be like staring down the length of a sheer cliff face. 

The impending conclusion of Stranger Things represents not just the loss of the streamer’s most marketable property, but the end of an era.

What could replace it? 

Something even stranger and that would be DPRK TV. Nothing would beat it!

Event Registration Rewards

Whenever an event announces that the first X registrants will receive some kind of swag, a gold-rush stampede begins. More often than not, it’s the people chasing rewards (they are quick and ruthless), not the event itself.

Most of these events include a free account to test an application, tool, or platform by building a small project. That’s where the real value lies, and the reward structure should reflect it. Instead of rewarding speed at registration, reward actual usage:

1. First finisher → backpack + t-shirt + mug

2. Next 2 finishers within 1 hour → backpack + choice of t-shirt or mug

3. Next 10 finishers within 24 hours → t-shirt + mug

4. Next 10 finishers within 72 hours → mug

5. All other finishers (within 7 days) → entered into a draw for 100 mugs

6. All attendees (even if they didn’t finish) → entered into a separate draw for 100 mugs, to feel included and not discouraged, next time they will do better

Yes, this approach takes more resources to organize, but the outcome is worth it. Instead of rewarding fast clickers, it rewards people who actually explore the product. Some of them may end up liking, even loving the product, becoming its strongest evangelists.

After all, in technology, it’s not what you learn but what you ship that counts.

Fritz-kola

It was not easy to find it but I persisted, and nothing special, the same artificial taste. I will stick with Pepsi if I want to drink a cola.

Barbershops

Hair cut: left - 10 EU, right - 12 EUR

Why? 

The right barbershop offers WiFi (who needs it in the day and age of plentiful data on phone plans) and free coffee (never saw anyone drinking it and I walked by so many times).

Could the owner be the same?! Did they want to capture both the Windows and the Apple crowd.

In fact once I saw a barber in the cheaper shop accidentally drop the scissors while cutting a client's hair. He just picked them up and continued cutting hair. 

If this had happened to me I would have kept quiet and thought "Yes, what to expect, I chose the cheaper price and this is what I get!"

However, if the same had happened in the more expensive barbershop I would have expected the barber to disinfect/clean the dropped pair of scissors and if not I would have made a big stink that would have not served any purpose in the end as the damage had already done by then (dirty scissors cutting my hair).

My deepest fear is that the barber would have behaved the same.

Hence, as I need neither WiFi nor coffee and if the barber would still use the same dirty scissors the rational economic decision is to go to the cheaper barbershop.

'Aboot' instead of 'About'

 I wonder whether it was Ryan Reynolds' idea :).

https://www.maximumeffort.com/aboot

Cervesa

I was in a store to buy a bier, I didn't really know what to, so many brands, until I saw:

I did not hesitate one second more and I grabbed it, a simple name that drew me instantly to it.

Of course, the price helped a lot, but if another beer at the same price had a fancy name, I'd have thought it was crap.

Coca Cola Hellenic - Preferred language for communication

Well done, I chose Armenian as it was the first language in the list and I have received communication in this language.

Ikea - Preferred language for communication

They ask so I wanted to test it, I chose German, wanted to make it easy, as I could have chosen Croatian or Hungarian :).

                                                

And no German, only very little Swedish.

Scientists Keep Finding Heavy Metals in Dark Chocolate

 New research published Wednesday found heavy metals in dark chocolate, the latest in a string of studies to raise concerns about toxins in cocoa products.

The researchers tested 72 dark chocolate bars, cocoa powders and nibs to see if they were contaminated with heavy metals in concentrations higher than those deemed safe by California’s Proposition 65, one of the nation’s strictest chemical regulations.

Among the products tested, 43 percent contained higher levels of lead than the law considers safe, and 35 percent had higher concentrations of cadmium. Both metals are considered toxic and have been associated with a range of health issues. The study did not name specific brands, but found that organic products were more likely to have higher concentrations. Products certified as “fair trade” did not have lower levels of heavy metals.

New York Times

 

Toxic Chocolate — As You Sow

My favourite chocolate is here :(

They responded:

Thanks for reaching out with your question about our cacao products. We completely understand your concerns about heavy metals—and share them. All of our cacao products are batch tested by third party, independent labs for heavy metals, microbials, and nutrition, and we reject anything that doesn't meet our quality and safety standards.
 
I can explain why the results in the As You Sow report seem especially concerning: instead of ppm or mcg/g, they display the results as mcg per serving. In the past, we had a higher than average serving size for our Cacao Powder (15g versus the more common 5-6g in the industry) in an effort to capture the 'common usage' amount. If you run the math out, you'll find that our cacao powder tested in this report is actually just under 0.5mcg/g, which is on the lower side of average for cacao. And our current average from the past six months is actually a touch lower at 0.4mcg/g.
 
Cadmium and lead are found in virtually all minimally processed cacao, as these metals occur naturally in soil all over the world. The same absorptive powers that make raw cacao such a good source of iron, magnesium, copper, and other beneficial minerals also means that it absorbs some amount of the less desirable metals as well. While we're never happy to see heavy metals in any food, we appreciate that cacao is at least also providing us with fiber, beneficial minerals, antioxidants, and healthy fats.
 
I hope that helps! If you have any further questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to reach back out.

Navitas Organics®

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So they say.

However, they could add:
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Panasonic - My Registered Products

 How the page could be improved

Documents & Manuals

Need to press OK to display the instructions, they should be displayed once ‘Operating Instructions’

has been selected, there is an extra unnecessary click now.

Why are 2 documents shown?

I suppose I should download the most recent one from 2023,

but why is the document from 2019 still downloadable?

I select the other document types, and every time ‘No Document Found’.

Message ‘No Document Found’ should be removed once a new entry is selected from the list

as the user might think there is no document for ‘Operating Instructions’.

There are no documents except for ‘Operating Instructions’ but even if they were they should all be displayed

without the user having to select the type, lots of clicks would be saved for the user.

Having  a screen with all document links displayed would far more user friendly, something like:

Document & Manual

Download document(s) from below list

Product FAQ

Click on ‘Product FAQ’ and I was expecting the FAQ for the product itself to be displayed not to search for it.





Lots of clicks that could have been avoided, the product FAQ should be displayed directly

upon clicking on the icon.

Firmware Update

There is no firmware for this product so the icon should not be there.

Panasonic Operating Instructions for Oral Irrigator

Charging (Fig. 2)

1 Insert main unit so it stands upright in the charging section.
The charging indicator will light up.

• The lamp does not go off even when charging ends.

2 Disconnect the power plug after charging is completed.

(for safety and to reduce energy usage)

So the lamp does not go off even when charging ends! How would I know when to disconnect the power plug?

I bought Panasonic and not a no-name brand no to deal with this kind of c..p. 
Very disappointed, I was expecting more from Panasonic. 

Premera Blue Cross reimbursement

Premera email: In review of your account, I do show that check 1234 in the amount of $150.00 was issued on 07/22/2023. The payment was sent as a paper check to your address on file and will be included in the same envelope as the claim Explanation of Benefits (EOB). If you do not receive your check within 15 business days of being issued, please let us know and we will be happy to request a replacement. At this time Premera does not have the option to reimburse members via direct deposit. I do apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused. (my bold)

We are in 2023 and they still issue checks !

Premera website: As the largest health plan in the Pacific Northwest, Premera serves more than 2 million people

IRS website: Direct deposit also saves you money. It costs the nation’s taxpayers more than $1 for every paper refund check issued, but only a dime for each direct deposit made.

ChatGPT: According to data available up to 2019, the National Health Expenditure Accounts (NHEA) by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) reported that in the United States, the average number of health insurance claims per person was around 3.4 to 3.8 claims per year.

Let's say if Premera handles 3 claims per person per year, they prefer to spend $6 mil. instead of $600k !

Premera website: Premera Blue Cross is a not-for-profit Blue Cross Blue Shield licensed healthcare company that offers health plans in Washington state and Alaska.

Yes, not for profit but that money could be better spent :).